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Advisory Board

Bio

Robin Brown is the Director for Health and Wellness at the Midwest Dairy Council, where she serves as a liaison to health professionals in the state of Illinois and conducts television, print, and radio interviews in the Chicago markets. As a licensed dietitian, Robin provides accurate, scientific, and practical information on the benefits of dairy nutrition as well as promoting programs such as Fuel Up to Play 60. Prior to joining the Midwest Dairy Council, Robin worked with the Chicago Public Schools where she created menus that met the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program regulations. She also gave various speeches on nutrition to the CPS community (students, parents, teachers, lunch room managers). Before this, she worked as a dietitian in a clinical setting.

Education

BS, Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona

BS, Nutrition, University of Illinois at Chicago

Certificate in Childhood and Adolescent Weight Management, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Positions

Director for Health & Wellness at the Midwest Dairy Council

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Bio

Gary Evans is an environmental and developmental psychologist interested in how the physical environment affects human health and wellbeing among children. His specific areas of expertise and focus include children's environments, childhood poverty, cumulative risk and child development, environmental stressors, and the development of children's environmental attitudes and behaviors. Dr. Evans is the author of over 250 scholarly articles in addition to five books. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the MacArthur Foundation, the W. T. Grant Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Swedish Work Environment Fund. Professor Evans has been awarded two Fulbright Research Fellowships and is the recipient of a Senior National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health. He recently held a fellowship in Rome from the University of Rome, La Sapienza I.

Education

PhD, Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1975

MS, Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1973

BA, Psychology, Colgate University, 1971

Positions

Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology, Cornell University

Faculty Fellow, Residential Life, Cornell University

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Bio

Jeremy Everett is the founding director of the Texas Hunger Initiative and a congressional appointee to the National Comission of Hunger. Jeremy has worked for international and community development organizations in various capacities, such as a teacher, religious leader, community organizer, fundraiser, and organic farmer. He frequently delivers presentations to churches, non-profit organizations, universities, and the government sector on the subjects of poverty, community development and organization, hunger, and social entrepreneurship. Jeremy regularly writes for the Huffington Post and has been featured on PBS documentaries and talk shows such as Feeding Minds: Texas Takes on Hunger and Obesity. Jeremy earned a bachelor's degree from Samford University and a Master of Divinity Degree from Baylor University. He's also the co-author of Advancing Childhood Food Security Through Organizing Strategies.

Education

MA, Divinity, Baylor University

BA, Samford University

Positions

Director, Texas Hunger Initiative, School of Social Work, Baylor University

Contact

Bio

Andrew Fuligni received his PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the social identification, family relationships, and adjustment of adolescents within various cultural groups, with a particular focus on the children of immigrant families. Professor Fuligni's work has been funded by a FIRST award from NICHD, a Faculty Scholars Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. He was a recipient of the American Psychological Association's Division 7 Boyd McCandless Award for Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology and is currently co-director of the NIMH Family Research Consortium IV. He was an associate member of the MacArthur Network on Middle Childhood and is currently a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Working Group on Social Identity and Institutional Engagement. Dr. Fuligni is a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Research on Adolescence and has served on the editorial boards of medical journals such as Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Education

PhD, Developmental Psychology, University of Michigan

Positions

Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA

Fellow, American Psychological Association

Co-Director, NIMH Family Research Consortium IV, National Institute of Mental Health

Associate Editor, Child Development

Contact

Bio

Dr. Schwartz received her PhD in Psychology from Yale University in 1996. Prior to joining the Rudd Center, she served as Co-Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders from 1996 to 2006. Dr. Schwartz's research and community service addresses how home environments, school landscapes, neighborhoods, and the media shape the eating attitudes and behaviors of children. She has collaborated with the Connecticut State Department of Education to evaluate nutrition and physical activity policies in schools throughout the state. She co-chaired the Connecticut Obesity Task Force in 2010 and has provided expert testimony on obesity-related state policies. She also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Food Bank. Dr. Schwartz has received research grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health to study school wellness policies, the preschool nutrition environment, the effect of food marketing on children, the relationship between food insecurity and nutrition, and how federal food programs can improve the accessibility and affordability of healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods. Dr. Schwartz's life and career were profiled by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Contact

Bio

Elaine Waxman is a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her areas of expertise include food insecurity, nutrition, the food assistance safety net, the social determinants of health disparities, as well as broader issues affecting low-income families and communities. Prior to joining the Urban Institute, Waxman served as the Vice President of Research and Nutrition at Feeding America, where she oversaw research on food insecurity, the intersection of hunger and health, and the circumstances and experiences of individuals seeking charitable food assistance. In that role, Waxman supervised Hunger in America 2014, the largest study ever conducted of charitable feeding in the United States, and collaborated on the development of the Map the Meal Gap project, the first county-level estimates of food insecurity in the U.S. Waxman previously conducted a series of research initiatives at the University of Chicago on the structure of low-wage work and challenges facing low-income working families. She has co-authored numerous research articles and policy reports in scholarly journals, including Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy, Social Service Review, Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, and Journal of Food Law and Policy. She received her PhD from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, where she is currently a lecturer. She also holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

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Bio

Thomas S. Weisner, PhD, is a professor of psychiatry (NPI Semel Institute, Center for Culture and Health) and anthropology at UCLA. His research and teaching interests are in culture and human development; medical, psychological and cultural studies of families and children at risk; mixed methods; and evidence-informed policy. He is director of the Center for Culture and Health at UCLA, and the Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Laboratory in the Mental Retardation Research Center. He is currently studying the impacts of changes in welfare and family supports on children and families, based on a longitudinal study over eight years of a successful random-assignment experimental support program for working-poor parents (with Greg Duncan, Aletha Huston, Hiro Yoshikawa, Bob Granger, and others). He is also currently directing a longitudinal study of families with children with developmental disabilities (with Barbara Keogh and Ronald Gallimore) and is collaborating on a random-assignment, experimental mixed-method study of the impacts of early literacy interventions on families and children for Head Start programs (with Chris Lonigan and JoAnn Farver). He is also collaborating on a qualitative study of physician use of local clinical knowledge (with Richard Kravitz and Naihua Duan). He has done longitudinal field research (through 1992) in Western Kenya and Nairobi, on sibling care taking of children, and on the long-term consequences of urban migration for children and families, as well as studies of sibling care taking and school competence among Native Hawaiians (with Ronald Gallimore).